


Fading Away

by I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Death by Sun & Cold Exposure, Deathfic, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Implied Offscreen Death, Mostly Communicating, Sad Ending, not graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 07:18:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15658416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning/pseuds/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning
Summary: A mission to Tatooine (After Anakin's knighting but before Ahsoka) resulted in capture by Sand People, who want a certain two Jedi to pay for what one of those two did, less than a year earlier. Anakin's secret is out.





	Fading Away

**Author's Note:**

> White_Ithiliel asked for this story to happen. Granted, I'm almost a hundred percent certain it was meant in sarcasm, but the brain sparkles can't tell the difference.
> 
> So thank you for the sparkle trap, darling.

 

The look on Obi-Wan's face when he realized was a hell all its own.

He hadn't protested Anakin  _ couldn't  _ have. He didn't speak of his own innocence. He didn't berate Anakin for his crime.

Instead, realization, and then a sad acceptance.

He hung there, from a frame made of bone, and stared thoughtfully at the burned huts, at the skeletons— some very tiny— that had been picked clean long before.

Obi-Wan Kenobi was going to die, because Anakin Skywalker had slaughtered an entire village of Tuskens.

The man understood, and the resistance went out of him, even if his dignity remained.

Anakin dreaded what his words would be, but the silence tormented him worse. He  _ needed  _ Obi-Wan to speak, to rip him open or soothe, but to just  _ do it— _

But he found he couldn't challenge him.

The shame kept Anakin mute.

And fear.

Obi-Wan's lips were split from dehydration, his fair skin crimson and peeling from the day spent hung in the sun with no shelter.

Anakin tested the rawhide bindings that kept his own hands trapped, but they held strong.

Another hour passed, the last sun slipping below the horizon, and Anakin shivered in the sudden chill. The heat had been cruel through the day, even with them left alone by the Tuskens who'd captured them.

But at night?

The temperature would plummet. Not quite to the freeze point, but terrifyingly close.

_ We might die of exposure long before they get around to torturing us. _

“Why aren't they beating us up?” Anakin rasped, his throat swollen from the lack of water.

Obi-Wan's response was free of judgment when he spoke, even if the words felt damning to Anakin. “What was done was not war, or an incursion against their clan. It was an affront to the planet and nature itself. So they have given us to the desert. For the planet to claim its due.”

“But you are innocent,” Anakin murmured.

Obi-Wan still didn't look at him, gaze instead locked on the stars becoming visible above them. “That is part of the point,” he replied, voice soft. “I am a sacrifice.”  
Anakin tried to use the Force once more to break his frame or free his hands, and once again it skittered out of his reach.

Perhaps from the head injuries they both had sustained in their capture. Probably that and their deteriorating condition... but Anakin couldn't help but feel that the Force had abandoned them to die as well.

“You don't seem surprised.” He feared to ask, but the not knowing made everything worse.

Obi-Wan's head turned in his direction, even if his gaze settled on the sand instead of his brother. “It's a bit late for recriminations. I don't see a point in making the end more miserable than it already is.”

“But— once you figured out it was  _ me...  _ you just...”

“The truth is not pretty, Anakin. The moon rising  _ is. _ I would like to enjoy this one beautiful thing, since it's the last one for us.”

Anakin shivered. He hated Obi-Wan's calm. “ _ Tell me. _ ”

It took a long moment before Obi-Wan spoke. Again, Anakin could find no resentment, no judgment in tone or the Force from him, but the words cut to bone.

“I've always known I would die for some atrocity you would commit. I knew it before Qui-Gon died, before we returned to Naboo, even. I could feel it. A coldness around my heart. I was not ready to face it, then. I feared it. I wanted to live. It didn't seem just.” Obi-Wan shrugged as much as he could with his hands bound above his head. “There is a morbid relief in no longer wondering when it will happen. To know it's done and gone, the living over, and all that is left is to die well. To have my connection to the Cosmic Force no longer be a source of torment, but for a few breathtaking hours, a comfort again like it was in my childhood, when it whispered I would be a Jedi.”

Anakin wanted to be furious. To hate Obi-Wan for never having believed in him.

But he knew what it was to face knowledge of the future. How it ate you up.

Obi-Wan's gift might not have been dreams or visions, but Anakin imagined the truths impressed into his heart were quite as terrifying and awful.

“Why didn't you help my mom?” Anakin asked, voice nearly inaudible. Tears burned his eyes, moisture he could ill afford to lose.

Though... it honestly didn't matter.

“You never said that you saw her in trouble. You simply said you 'dreamed of her,' and that you didn't know why. I never once suspected she was in distress. Why didn't you tell me?”  
_ Because I couldn't bear to speak aloud my fears, because it felt like that might make them real.  _ To say he saw her tormented,  _ dying—  _ he'd tried to forget it. To avoid it. To think of other things. If he didn't  _ look  _ at it, it wouldn't become  _ real. _

Until the vision had become too insistent, and he'd finally acted.

Too late.

“You knew she was a slave, and you did  _ nothing, _ ” Anakin accused.

Obi-Wan shook his head, and finally his gaze lifted to meet Anakin's own. “I didn't know until you'd been my Padawan for four years. Qui-Gon never mentioned it. He didn't include it in his briefing to the Council about you, and he was too preoccupied to speak of it to me. You never spoke of it. I was shocked to find out, and once I did, I took leave. There was a week where you thought I was on a mission. Instead, I clocked out. I went alone and without telling anyone here, to see if there was anything I could do. I never really had much use for my stipend, so it had just been accumulating. I converted it to a more useful currency, and I planned that if it wasn't enough, I would contact then-Queen Amidala to request a loan for the rest.”  
_ What? _

“By the time I figured out where Qui-Gon had gotten you from, she was a free woman and married. She didn't need me to save her; she'd saved herself. I met her. She was happy. And so glad to hear of you.”

Anakin's hands trembled, and he was the one who had to look away from Obi-Wan's quiet gaze.

“Childhood is closely monitored in the Order, but free time is a knight's own. I assumed you would use your leave to visit her, once I cut your braid and freed you from the grueling growing-up years.”

“She died before I had the chance,” Anakin whispered.

Obi-Wan's sadness in the Force deepened. “Yes. So I learned, twenty hours ago.” He leaned his head back against the curved bone and looked up to the first moon again. “You and I have seen more sentient-caused pain than any being should ever have to, and we've caused pain—”

“ _ I.  _ I have.” He might be dying because of Anakin's choice two years ago, but Anakin would be damned if Obi-Wan would claim responsibility for Anakin taking a saber to... to kids.

“I've made many decisions in the field when one had to be called, and many of them I wonder about afterwards. If not absolutely hate myself for. I've sent men into battle and seen only corpses come back. I confess, as cowardly as it is, I am glad it's over. And I'm glad I'm not going peacefully in my sleep. I hardly feel I would deserve that. Twenty-five-year-old me could never have fathomed such a thing, but here I am.”

_ No.  _ “You don't deserve this. You don't deserve  _ me _ . You deserve better. We have to get out of here.”

“Give the word when it's time for me to run, then,” Obi-Wan murmured, undisturbed by Anakin's agitation. “Invent a plan, and I'll follow it.”

_ But you know it will be futile. _

Anakin could continue to rage, to tear against what was coming.

Or maybe he could savor the moon with Obi-Wan, accept that his due had come, and die with what dignity he had left.

 

 


End file.
